I do a lot of work in the B2B space. When I ask B2B teams who their customer is they quickly respond with, “the streaming media company” or “the healthcare organization.” These teams know what industries they support. They know what kinds of businesses they support within those industries. Ask them to name the human within those businesses that actually interacts with their product and the conversation gets quiet quickly.
Everyone has a customer
In our new book, Who does what by how much? A practical guide to customer-centric OKRs, Josh Seiden and I lay out our case for the idea that everyone has a customer. That is, no matter what you do at work, someone, another human, consumes it at some point. That human is your customer even if you don’t traditionally look at them in that way. Your job is to make those humans more successful. This is equally important in the B2B space.
Yes, in B2B we serve other “businesses” but (despite the US government’s debate on the topic), companies are not people. When you’re building for other businesses it’s critical to understand who the humans are that buy from you, install your product, repurpose it for their needs, deploy it and use it. Depending on the size of the business that could be 1 person or it could be multiple people or teams. To generalize it to the type of business, though, reduces the chances you’ll serve your customers’ needs appropriately.
B2B companies, like Soylent green, are made of people
When we begin to isolate the individual personas within our client organizations we can get much more specific about each of their needs. The needs of the person procuring your product are going to be very different from the person who has to use it. As we move away from “the business” as our customer to “the procurement manager” or “the implementation developer” or even “the data entry intern” we can ensure that the experiences we create for each of these humans in our value chain meets their specific needs.
I’ve found that it takes some pushing but when you ask the question, “Who is the actual human being you interact with?” Enough times, people start to make the connection with the human on the client’s end. Once you identify one person, you then work your way through the whole value chain. Next, you create a persona for each one of them, identifying their unique needs.
Unique needs translate into Objectives and Key Results
Why do we work to understand the people in our B2B client organizations? Because, once identified and validated, we can translate those needs into human-centric goals. When we have clear customer benefits and behavior change targets for each of the people in our value chain we can design and build experiences that better meet each of their needs rather than solving for “the business” needs which are likely to end up meeting no actual human’s needs.
We could even begin to divide our teams into persona-specific work streams. For example, you could have one team ensuring that the purchasing, provisioning and procurement (alliteration!) of the product (more p’s!) is simple and efficient. Another team could work on the installation process for your implementation client leads. And yet a third team could ensure the product itself meets the needs of its eventual users. In each of these instances success, we define in our book, is measured by meaningful, positive changes in the behavior of these people. For us this means we can better triage issues with our offering and focus our efforts on the most important needs at any given moment.
There’s a human in every transaction
B2B teams often forget the humans they serve. In reality, there’s a human at every step of the process. If you work in this world, consider moving away from generic terms such as “the bank” or “the airline” and instead think about each of the people that use the products you make. Who are they? What are their unique needs? How can you better serve each one them? And, finally, which of their behaviors will you measure in your OKRs to ensure you’re actually giving them what they need?
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Two quick plugs:
- New book on OKRs is here. Please buy a copy and write a review.
- I’ve created a free, 5-day email course called The OKR Repair Kit. Sign up here.